Cossack

Cossack

See also: cossack

English

Cossacks (military).

Alternative forms

• cossack
• kozak, Kozak

Etymology

Circa 1600, from Middle French cosaque, from Polish Kozak[1], from Ukrainian коза́к (kozák) (cf. Russian каза́к (kazák) or Russian коза́к (kozák) (older spelling)), from Kazakh қазақ (qazaq), from Old Turkic *qazaq‎ (*qazaq, “free man, independent”), from qazmaq‎ (qazmaq, “to dig, scrape, scratch”), from Proto-Turkic *kaŕ-.[2] Doublet of Kazakh.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkɒsˌæk/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑsˌæk/, /ˈkɔsˌæk/
• Hyphenation: Cos‧sack

Noun

Cossack (plural Cossacks)

1. A member or descendant of an originally (semi-)nomadic population of Eastern Europe and the adjacent parts of Asia, formed in part of runaways from neighbouring countries, that eventually settled in parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian tsarist Empire (where they constituted a legendary military caste), particularly in areas now comprising southern Russia and Ukraine.
2. A member of a military unit (typically cavalry, originally recruited exclusively from the above).
3. (obsolete) A Ukrainian.

Derived terms

• Cossackdom
• Cossack green
• Cossack hat
• Cossack post
• decossackization

Related terms

• Kazakh
• Kazakhstan

Translations

member of a population

Albanian: kozak m Arabic: قُوزَاق‎ m (quzāq) Armenian: կազակ (hy) (kazak) Azerbaijani: kazak Belarusian: каза́к m (kazák), каза́чка f (kazáčka) Bulgarian: каза́к m (kazák), каза́чка f (kazáčka) Catalan: cosac (ca) m, cosaca (ca) f Chinese: Mandarin: 哥薩克／哥萨克 (zh) (gēsàkè) Crimean Tatar: qazaq Czech: kozák (cs) m, kozáčka f Danish: kosak c Dutch: Kozak m Esperanto: please add this translation if you can Estonian: kasakas Finnish: kasakka (fi) French: Cosaque (fr) m or f Georgian: კაზაკი (ḳazaḳi) German: Kosak (de) m Greek: Κοζάκος (el) m (Kozákos) Hebrew: קוזאק‎ m (kozak) Hindi: कोज़ाक (kozāk), कज़ाक (kazāk), कजाक (hi) m (kajāk) Hungarian: kozák (hu) Icelandic: kósakki m Italian: cosacco (it) m Japanese: コサック (kosakku) Kalmyk: хазг (hazg) Kazakh: казак (kazak) Korean: 카자크 (kajakeu) Kyrgyz: казак (ky) (kazak) Latvian: kazaks m Lithuanian: kazokas m Macedonian: Козак m (Kozak) Mongolian: казак (mn) (kazak) Norwegian: Bokmål: kosakk m Nynorsk: kosakk m Old Church Slavonic: Cyrillic: коꙁакъ m (kozakŭ) Old East Slavic: козакъ m (kozakŭ) Ossetian: хъазах (qazax) Persian: قزاق‎ (fa) (qazzâq) Polish: Kozak (pl) m, Kozaczka f Portuguese: cossaco (pt) m Romanian: cazac (ro) Russian: каза́к (ru) m (kazák), коза́к (ru) m (kozák) (dated spelling), каза́чка (ru) f (kazáčka) Serbo-Croatian: Cyrillic: Козак m Roman: Kozak m Slovak: kozák (sk) m, kozáčka f Slovene: kozak m Spanish: cosaco m Swedish: kosack (sv) c Tagalog: Kosako Tajik: казак (kazak) Tatar: казак (tt) (qazaq) Turkish: kazak (tr) Turkmen: kazak Ukrainian: коза́к (uk) m (kozák), коза́чка (uk) f (kozáčka) Uzbek: kazak (uz) Vietnamese: Cô-dắc Written Oirat: ᡍᠠᠴᠠᡎ (xazag) Yiddish: קאָזאַק‎ m (kozak)

member of a Cossack military unit

Armenian: կազակ (hy) (kazak) Catalan: cosac (ca) m, cosaca (ca) f Czech: kozák (cs) m French: cosaque (fr) m or f German: Kosak (de) m Hungarian: kozák (hu) Icelandic: kósakki m Persian: قزاق‎ (fa) (Qazzâq) Polish: kozak (pl) m Portuguese: cossaco (pt) m Slovak: kozák (sk) m Tagalog: Kosako Ukrainian: коза́к (uk) m (kozák) Yiddish: קאָזאַק‎ m (kozak), קאָזאַקן‎ m pl (kozakn)

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Translations to be checked

Macedonian: (please verify) козак m (kozak) Serbo-Croatian: Cyrillic: (please verify) kozak (sh) m Roman: (please verify) козак m Slovak: (please verify) kozák (sk) m Slovene: (please verify) kozak m

References

1. Etymology and history of “cosaque”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
2. “Cossack”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.

Anagrams

• cassock